Characteristics of wire-electro discharge machined Ti6Al4V surface

Titanium and titanium alloys (e.g., Ti6Al4V) are increasingly used in aerospace and automotive industries, and also used as medical implant material in wide variety of applications. Wire-electro discharge machining (WEDM) is an important non-traditional machining process, widely used for machining a variety of difficult-to-machine materials including titanium alloys with intricate shapes. The process is essentially a thermal process and the nature of surface produced is studied in this paper. It is observed that more uniform surface characteristics are obtained with coated wire electrode. Among the parameters such as time between two pulses, pulse duration, injection pressure, wire speed and wire tension that have more influence on the surface characteristics, the time between two pulses is the most sensitive parameter. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.